Chapter 2

THIS STAR OF ENGLAND“William Shakes-speare”
Man of the RenaissancebyDorothy and Charlton Ogburn

Chapter Two

The 1560s

SIR WILLIAM CECIL, Principal Secretary of State, had been appointed guardian of the Royal Ward on behalf of the Queen. And it was at Cecil House in the Strand, just opposite the recent site of the Cecil Hotel, that young Oxford took up his residence. This new home was an imposing structure of brick and timber, “adorned with four turrets placed at the four corners of the house; within . . . curiously beautified with rare devices, and especially the Oratory, placed in an angle of the great chamber.” (1)The garden, for twenty years the charge of John Gerard, author of Herbal, or General History of Plants, was noted for its rich variety of flowers, shrubs, and trees. Formal allees were adorned with fountains, a sun-dial, occasional statuary.

During the ensuing eight years, except for the time spent at Cambridge and later at Oxford, Edward de Vere lived at Cecil House, where his days were strictly regimented, as a document entitled “Orders for the Earl of Oxford’s exercises” indicates. He was “to rise at such time as he may be ready to his exercises by 7 o’clock.” Then:

He “read before dinner the Epistle and the Gospel in his own tongue and in the other tongue after dinner. All the rest of the day to be spent in riding, shooting, dancing, walking, and other commendable exercises, saving the time for Prayer.”

His tutor was Laurence Nowell, Dean of Litchfield, with Arthur Golding still on hand to school the boy in his special field. The young Earl’s precocity and mental maturity are attested in a letter addressed to his guardian by the scholarly Dean when his pupil was only thirteen and a half years of age: “I clearly see that my work for the Lord of Oxford cannot much longer be required.” His linguistic proficiency, as well as his spontaneity and warmth, are shown in a letter he himself wrote in French, during that same year, to Cecil, dated August 23, 1563:

It was twelve months after this, on August 10, 1564, that Edward de Vere received his A.B. degree from Cambridge University, where he had lodged at St. John’s College. During the Queen’s visit to Cambridge he had acted in a presentation in Latin of the Aulularia of Plautus at King’s College Chapel. He had continued writing poems while there, with most of which he followed the rigid convention of the day that prohibited the publication of verses by a nobleman under his own name, or even in his lifetime, although a few others, in defiance of custom, he signed with the initials, E. O. Some of these appear in an anthology called The Paradise of Dainty Devices.

In England’s Helicon there are verses signed by the “posy,” Shepherd Tony, which, though far from matching the quality of his later work, show definite merit and a forecast of excellence to come. Obviously written under the influence of the affectations of early Elizabethan poetry, they are distinguished for a new note of realism which Oxford was destined to carry to such lengths in his dramatic verse that Hamlet could truly say, “the players . . . tell all.” (4)

By now the youth’s predilections, talents, and zest for scholarship had become so well recognized that he was made the recipient of dedications from such authors as John Brooke, himself a graduate of Trinity College, and Arthur Golding, who testified to his admiration for his former pupil by comparing him to Epaminondas, Prince of Thebes, and to Arymba, King of Epirus, one that excelled not only in martial arts but in learning and the arts of peace.

Brooke wrote, in part:

I understanding right well that your honour hath continually, even from your tender years, bestowed your time and travail towards the attaining of (scholarship), as also the University of Cambridge hath acknowledged in granting . . . unto you such commendation and praise thereof, and verily by right was due unto your excellent virtue and rare learning….(5)

And Golding, in May 1564:

It came to my remembrance that since it hath pleased Almighty God to take to his mercy your noble father (to whom I had long before vowed this my travail) there was not any who, either of duty might more justly claim the same, or for whose estate it seemed more requisite . . . or of whom I thought it should be more favourably accepted, than of your honour. For . . . it is not unknown to others, and I have had experience thereof myself, how earnest a desire your honour hath naturally grafted in you to read, peruse, and communicate . . . as well the histories of ancient times, and things done long ago, as also of the present estate of things in our days, and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit and understanding. The which do not only rejoice the hearts of all such as bear faithful affection to the honourable house of your ancestors, but also stir up a great hope and expectation of such wisdom and experience in you in times to come, as is meet and beseeming for so noble a race. Let these and other examples encourage your tender years . . . to proceed in learning and virtue . . . and yourself to become thereby the equal to any of your predecessors in advancing the honour of your noble house: whereof . . . your great forwardness giveth assured hope and expectation…. Your Lordship’s humble servant, Arthur Goldyng. (6)

In these lines, de Vere’s tutor had touched upon the dominant interests—upon what came to be almost the obsessions—of his life: the honor of his name and his love of virtue, learning, and the arts, in especial an interest in “histories of ancient times, and things done long ago, as also of the present estate of things in our days,” which, indeed, he displayed a natural, even an irresistible tendency to “peruse and communicate.” Throughout his life many of his contemporaries would comment upon his honesty and fair dealing, his generosity and his virtue. Any smirch upon the name his ancestors had made illustrious was, from boyhood to his life’s end, a source of anguish to him; yet ironically his name was to become the object of slander and a strange obloquy, to the extent that finally, although he, pre-eminently among the Veres who had for five centuries glorified it, deserved the high accolade of posterity, it was to be obliterated, and the honor which was his due made a mockery and a sham. Edward de Vere’s life was as dramatic as any he celebrated in his work, and none, given his innate nobility, his aspirations, and achievements, could in its final sum have been more profoundly tragic.

The first blow struck soon after his father’s death, when he was only thirteen. His half-sister, Katherine, daughter of the Sixteenth Earl by his first wife, charged him with bastardy and, abetted by her husband, Baron Windsor, sued to recover his part of the estate. Her claim that Edward’s mother, Margery Golding, had not been legally married to the Sixteenth Earl, was refuted. In the Parish Register of Belchamp St. Paul’s, Essex, the simple entry may still be read:

Ao. Domini 1548. The wedding of my Lord John de Vere, Earl of Oxenford, and Margery, the daughter of John Goulding Esquire, the first of August.

The scandal soon blew over, but it had brought shock and grief to the proud young Earl, no doubt increasing his sensitiveness to any further slur.

It is said that the Queen one day had laughingly taunted him about the suit, calling him her “little bastard”; whereupon he had burst into tears and rushed headlong from her presence. The youth relieved his wounded spirit by writing a poem on the subject, thus initiating a habit of release through his art which was to grow upon him and lead to the creation of an intricate and beautiful fabric of poetry and drama at once darkened by his sufferings and illuminated by his genius. This early poem, however, gave small hint, unless through its fervor, of the power to come.

His good name being blemished, he bewaileth

Fram’d in the front of forlorn hope past all recovery,
I stayless stand, to abide the shock of shame and infamy.
My life, through ling’ring long, is lodg’d in lair of loathsome ways;
My death delay’d to keep from life the harm of hapless days.
My sprites, my heart, my wit and force, in deep distress are drown’d;
The only loss of my good name is of these griefs the ground.

And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice and tongue are weak,
To utter, move, devise, conceive, sound forth, declare and speak,
Such piercing plaints as answer might, or would my woeful case,
Help crave I must, and crave I will, with tears upon my face,
Of all that may in heaven or hell, in earth or air be found,
To wail with me this loss of mine, as of these griefs the ground.

Help Gods, help saints, help sprites and powers that in the heaven do dwell,
Help ye that are aye wont to wail, ye howling hounds of hell;
Help man, help beasts, help birds and worms, that on the earth do toil;
Help fish, help fowl, that flock and feed upon the salt sea soil,
Help echo that in air doth flee, shrill voices to resound,
To wail this loss of my good name, as of these griefs the ground.

E.O.

We have stressed “good name,” because it is a concept of such importance in the poet’s life that it is frequently reflected in his writing. We might add that, together with the fervor of emotion, one finds here a gusto for word and image which is prophetic of intellectual abundance—for example, in line 8—while the reference to “echo,” not to mention “tears,” is the first of many throughout his work.

In September of his seventeenth year the Earl of Oxford received his M.A. degree at Christ Church College, Oxford University, in the presence of the Chancellor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. His university training complete, he proceeded to Gray’s Inn, to spend the ensuing three years in the study of law.

At Gray’s Inn, where George Gascoigne had recently introduced Continental plays, his interest in the drama struck root and flourished. Two plays translated by Gascoigne, The Supposes from the Supposisti of Ariosto, and Jocasta from the Phoenissae of Euripides (the latter done in collaboration with Kinwelmersh and Yelverton), the first Italian and Greek dramas ever given in English, were presented by “the gentlemen of the Inn.” From time to time others were given, in which Oxford himself would have taken part, together with Philip Sidney and, later, Francis Bacon.

“About this time,” says an entry in Sir William Cecil’s diary for July 1567, “Thomas Bricknell, an under-cook, was hurt by the Earl of Oxford at Cecil House in the Strand, whereof he died; and by a verdict found felo-de-se with running upon a point of a fence sword of the said Earl’s.” Subsequently, in a personal letter, Cecil admitted that he helped the jury to find the verdict of acquittal.

We have no way of knowing whether the unfortunate Bricknell was doing a bit of spying for his master, although we have indisputable evidence that some years later Cecil did employ servants to spy into Oxford’s doings and received a haughty rebuke for his intrusion.

Since William Cecil, with unremitting purpose and fixed plan, saw to it that nothing within his control ever went into the record which did not reflect credit upon himself and his family—a fact that explains the tone and limitations of Camden’s Annals, a history of England which he sponsored and which has been the source of most of our information concerning the Elizabethan Age—it is permissible to speculate upon this note and this admission.

Cecil, an able politician and administrator, shrewd opportunist and tireless worker in Elizabeth’s behalf, was ipso facto a thoroughly practical man who had no sympathy with any serious pursuit of the arts, really no comprehension of, and therefore no patience with, the creative temper. A man of Cecil’s type, to whom expediency and advancement constituted the sole guide, could not conceive of the poet’s spiritual integrity, his dedication to truth. (Here was the first, the fundamental irony of Lord Oxford’s situation.) Still a commoner, single-minded and ambitious, William Cecil upheld established convention as immutable law. To him, therefore, the contemptuous opinion in which poetic composition and the dramatic arts were held was absolute. As for the theatre, it was indeed a sink of vulgarity, the actors at that time the lowest kind of vagabonds; and it would never have occurred to Cecil’s conservative and ignoble mind that it might be elevated.

In 1575 Cecil, by then Lord Burghley, wrote the Earl of Shrewsbury that he hoped the Earl’s son would not develop “any curiosity of human learning . . . which I see doeth great hurt to all youth in this time and age.” 7

Close association with, and even dependence upon, such a man in his home and as his ward was, for a youth of Lord Oxford’s temperament and tastes, bound to precipitate recurrent frictions and strains, if not abiding animosities. On the one side was the mature statesman, crafty, experienced, ruthless, who in the beginning of his career had shifted loyalties and justified treacheries with consummate adroitness and sang-froid. He had betrayed his friend Somerset for Somerset’s worst enemy, then as facilely veered about and betrayed Northumberland in turn. 8A man of property, goaded by ambition, suspicious by nature, cautious in method, sanctioned and dignified by success, he was one who, having—by practices so politic and devious that even Machiavelli might have learned from him—achieved the highest place in his sovereign’s counsels, knew how to maintain it, and indeed served her in guiding the country during forty years of her reign with a competence so astute and all-embracing that, in the verdict of history, the stupendous ends would seem not only to have justified, but actually to have ennobled, the means.

On the other side was the proud young Earl, sensitive, generous, impetuous, bred in a conception of honor as absolute as a religious code, warm in his affections, ardent in his loyalties, with a deep appreciation of poetry, music, the drama of history no less than that of the life around him, and with an inborn response to beauty and the higher reaches of the spirit. He was perfectly at ease in the position to which the older man aspired and took for granted the eminence the other coveted.

That the association of these two was kept as superficially amicable as it proved in the long run to be, is a credit to the intelligence and self-restraint of both; but it is not surprising that there were times when considerable irritation and rancor were felt on both sides. There could never have been much love or real sympathy between such opposite natures. In fact, each seems to have been destined to contemn the ways of the other.

It is deplorable—all things considered, it is astounding—that Cecil should have had the last word. This man whose appetite for fame had led him, by the strange law of contraries, to needless depths of infamy, even caused to be engraved upon his wife’s tomb a slur upon the son-in-law whose ruin had been one means of his own aggrandizement, accompanied by a pious panegyric of himself.

Perhaps this is as good a time as any to make the unqualified statement that William Cecil consistently and with consummate guile played to the gallery of posterity. In periods of corruption we speak of an influential man’s “fixing” the press. Cecil “fixed” history with a cold, clear purpose, the far-reaching power of which amazes the mind. Camden, upon the publication, in 1615, of his History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, etc., stated: “Above eighteen years since William Cecil, Baron of Burghley . . . imparted to me, first his own and then the Queen’s Rolls, Memorials and Records, willing me to compile from thence an Historical account of the First Beginnings of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth….” This is the chief source to which historians and annalists have gone. (Burghley even had authority of censorship over Holinshed’s Chronicles of contemporary events, as we shall show.) A feature of the man’s diabolical sagacity seems to have been a cynical assurance regarding human meekness in the face of the “authorized version,” the dogmatic ukase.

Throughout Lord Oxford’s long connection with William Cecil, first as his ward, then as his kinsman by marriage, one of the most irksome features of the older man’s behavior was his inveterate prying. In this he indulged both officially and in personal affairs. (Years afterward, Robert Cecil, who was his father’s duplicate in craft, hid behind the arras during part of the Essex trial.) The Secretary’s system of espionage was intricate, far-reaching, effective. As everyone knows, it was of inestimable benefit to the Queen at a time when conspiracy was rife and traitors in smiling guise waited upon her at court, sometimes even among her own trusted relatives. During one dangerous month, in 1562, “every line the Spanish ambassador wrote was secretly conveyed to Cecil by Borghese.”9

Nothing, however, could have been more intolerable than personal suspicion to the first earl of the realm, an imperious, somewhat undisciplined youth, unused to having his actions criticized or his integrity questioned. If it were not for the fact that by a peculiar fatality—too consistent to be accidental—most of the records of the young man’s life, including his personal letters, have been destroyed, there would doubtless be many more evidences of protest upon his part.

So, as we say, it is interesting to speculate, in the matter of the “under-cook” who died “with running upon a point of a fence sword of the said Earl’s”—an affair which evokes a well-known dramatic incident concerning an eavesdropper—whether Thomas Bricknell may not have met a spy’s fate. Otherwise would not the inveterately self-righteous Secretary have expressed censure for the culprit and have been at less pains to minimize the incident?

There was another serious difference between the two. Sir William never tired of rebuking the younger man for his improvidence, his utter disregard of money; and this in spite of the fact that there had patently been no effort to discourage habits of extravagance while the boy was living in his guardian’s house. For example, expenditure for clothes during this period was enormous. A document summarizing “the charges of apparel of the Earl of Oxford, 1566,” is endorsed in the methodical Cecil’s own handwriting:

For the apparel, with Rapiers and Daggers for my Lord of Oxenford, his person, viz.:

1562 and 63—In the first year and twenty-six odd days, beginning the third of September, and ending the 28th of September, Anno Reginae Elizabeth 5th.

154

5

6

1563 and 64—Item, in the second year, beginning on the 28th of September, Anno 5th, and ending 30th of September, Anno 6th.

106

15

11

1564 and 5—Also in the third year beginning the last of October, Anno 6th, ending the 28th of September, Anno 7th.

191

10

8

1565 and 6—More for the 5th year beginning the 30th Day of September, Anno 7th, and ending the 28th Sept. Anno 8th.

175

12

1

1566—Sum of these 4 years.

£627

15

0

(10)

Another account-book is headed:

Payments made by John Hart, Chester Herald, on behalf of the Earl of Oxford from January 1st to September 30th, 1569/70:

To John Spark, draper, for fine black [cloth] for a cape and a riding cloak.

6

5

0

To Myles Spilsby, tailor, for one doublet of cambric, one of fine canvas, and one of black satin; and the furniture of a riding cloak.

12

13

0

To John Martin, hosier, for one pair of velvet hose, black.

10

9

2

To Philip Eunter, upholsterer, for one fine wool bed bolster, and pillows of down

2

7

0

To Brown, my Lord’s servant, for ten pairs of Spanish leather shoes, and three pairs of Moyles.

1

5

0

To John Maria, cutler, for a rapier, dagger and girdle.

1

6

8

To William Seres, stationer, for a Geneva Bible gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s works in French, with other books and papers.

2

7

10

To George Hill, saddler, for collars and girths for my Lord’s horse.

5

0

To Riche, the apothecary, for potions, pills and other drugs, for my Lord’s diet in time of his sickness.

15

15

4

To William Bishop, for wood and coals for victuals for my Lord and his men in the time of his said diet, for a comocase furnished, for two Italian books, for house rent, for the hire of a hothouse, for horse hire, boat hire, carriages and other.

30

16

0

To Chester Herald, for six sheets of fine holland, six handkerchiefs and six others of cambric, and for four yards of velvet, and four others of satin, for to guard and border a Spanish cape

15

10

8

More to him for certain other articles for my Lord, during his being sick at Windsor, for rewards to his physician, and others, for servants’ wages. . . and for the charges of keeping in the stable and shoeing of four geldings for my Lord’s service.

36

5

4

And for the board and diet of my Lord with his tutors and servants at Cecil House for 14 days of this quarter at £3 a week

6

0

0

Summa Totalis

145

17

4

This for the first quarter. In the following quarter occurs an item:

To William Tavy, capper, for one velvet hat, and one taffeta hat; two velvet caps, a scarf, two pairs of garters with silver at the ends, a plume of feathers for a hat, and another hat band.

£4

6

0

In the third quarter, for more books:

To William Seres, stationer, for Tully’s and Plato’s works in folio, with other books, paper and nibs.

4

6

4

(11)

Since some of these items constitute a rather formidable expenditure for a boy in his ‘teens, even in those days of elaborate personal adornment, one cannot help wondering if commissions and deductions did not perhaps go to some artful manipulator. For instance, the “apparel, with Rapiers and Daggers,” came in four years to more than $25,000 in our money, one pound being worth about $40 in our present value [1952]. And from January through September 1569-70, (12) some of the charges seem exorbitant: $400 for one pair of black velvet hose; more than $600 for drugs during an illness; while $480 for two doublets and “furniture” for a riding-cloak is rather dear. The amount spent for books—more than $80 at one time, for the Geneva Bible, Chaucer, Plutarch, etc., and more than $160 at another, for Tully, Plato, etc.—indicates at least the importance of literature to the young Earl, the latter sum, we note, including “paper and nibs.” It is especially interesting to find him reading Plutarch in French ten years before Lord North translated the Lives into English. The author of the early version of Timon of Athens, 1576-77, used Plutarch as one of his sources; he of course continued to do so for other plays. Lord Oxford’s possession of the Geneva Bible and Chaucer is to be noted for the future use he made of them.

In his Essay on Lord Bacon, Macaulay wrote:

All the books then extant in the vernacular languages of Europe would hardly have filled a single shelf…. It was therefore absolutely necessary that a man should be uneducated or classically educated….The Latin was in the 16th century all and more than French was in the18th.

It is arresting, to say the least, in connection with these expense accounts, to find Hume relating that “a statement in [Cecil’s] own hand” in July, 1570, “contains an indignant denial of the reports that had been spread with regard to his alleged dishonest dealing with the property of his ward the Earl of Oxford.” (13) It is typical of Hume that he glosses this over as if it were of no consequence. During that same year Ambassador de Spes wrote: “Cecil is a crafty fox . . . it is necessary to watch his designs very closely, because he proceeds with the greatest caution and dissimulation.” (14)

[N.B.: Dorothy Ogburn’s research points to Cecil as the main beneficiary of Oxford’s wardship and lands. However, research by Nina Green presents a formidable case that the true beneficiary of the wardship was Queen Elizabeth and the true beneficiary of the lands was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.]

Although Lord Oxford had inherited 86 landed estates, many of them were encumbered. He had been made executor of his father’s will, but it is doubtful if he ever had any practical experience in handling property, since in all the great families there were agents who took charge of such matters. His childhood had been spent in the spacious comfort—or what passed for comfort in those austerer days—of Castle Hedingham, his youth in that of his guardian’s stately town house and the more luxurious suburban mansion, Theobalds, as well as at the court—in Whitehall, Windsor, Richmond, Greenwich, or wherever the Queen elected to reside. His preoccupation, exclusive of sports and the prescribed activities of a courtier, was all with patriotic exploits, with learning and the arts; he could scarcely have been expected to be greatly concerned with financial matters, or, if Cecil did not instruct him, aware of the necessity for prudence in this regard.

During his wardship, from 1562 until his majority in 1571—and, it would seem, for many years longer—all his affairs were in William Cecil’s hands. And it is curious to note that, although the Earl was to be forced during the ensuing fifteen years to alienate one estate after another, to the sum of forty-nine in all, becoming gradually impoverished, Cecil, who shortly before had been bewailing his own poverty, managed, after getting himself appointed Master of the Court of Royal Wards, to increase his holdings until, at the time of his death, he was possessed of three hundred landed estates.

An interesting sidelight upon this rather striking circumstance is the fact that the two noblemen most hostile to both Cecil and his son were Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who became Royal Wards after de Vere’s time. These two young men seemed to have disliked the whole Cecil family. The Earl of Oxford is said, in fact, to have been the only one who ever maintained friendly relations with William Cecil.

In Oxford’s case, the final settlement in 1590 of his indebtedness to the Court of Wards was, according to Strype, 22,000 pounds—this amounting to nearly a million dollars in our currency.

Financial ineptitude upon such a grand scale as this is remarkable even in a poet; but one recalls that Shakespeare again and again evinces a bland indifference to money similar in scope. It is the villain who counsels, “Put money in thy purse.”

No one was ever more plausible in speech, or apparently more suave in manner, than William Cecil. According to Macaulay, “The deep stain upon his memory is that, for differences of opinion for which he would risk nothing himself, he, in the day of his power, took away without scruple the lives of others.”

But he did far more than that.

NOTES

1. Wheatly: London Past and Present (1891); quot. Stowe and Norden.

2.Ward; p. 20; cit. S.P.Dom. Eliz., 26.50.

3.Ward; p. 21; cit. Lansdowne MSS., 6.25.

4. A modern editor of England’s Helicon, A. H. Bullen, exploded the theory that Shepherd Tony was Anthony Munday, in 1887. Looney demonstrates to our satisfaction that he was the young Edward de Vere. (Shakespeare Identified; pp. 250 and 308.) We are confident that Ignoto in this collection also stands for de Vere.

8. Tytler, in England Under the Reign of Edward VI and Mary II, says of William Cecil, “Upon the whole, there is presented in these papers”—i.e., the “Submission” he offered Mary upon her accession—”a picture of successful craft, disingenuity and, I must add, falsehood which has perhaps never been equalled in the history of statesmen.” (Vol. 11, p. 206.)]

9. Hume: The Great Lord Burghley; p. 130.

10. Ward; pp. 32-3; cit. S.P.Dom. Eliz., 42.38.

11. Op. cit.: pp. 32-3; cit. S.P.Dom., Add. 19.38. (Our italics.)

12. This is in reality only eight months, since at that time the New Year began on March 4; thus January 1569-70 was actually January 1570.